real_tabasco_sauce

@Fabius I am glad you are happy with the changes so far. As for the catapults, I didn't want to make them too strong at attacking units, so they have a very small splash radius. So, you will really only see the effect with highly bunched units. It is only meant to slightly improve the catapult effectiveness vs infantry.

It is true that it was a bold move, and I realize the mod is dividing the multiplayer lobby to some extent. It has been a year and a half since the last release, and with the meta being so static and dependent on 'sniping', I knew a bold move was needed to thoroughly test these changes if they are to be committed. If I had not added it to the community mod, the changes would either have been abandoned out of fear of imbalance or minimally tested and committed with imbalances. With this bold move, we now have the opportunity to extensively playtest changes and make improvements or remove stuff. I could have instead made a separate mod for smaller scale testing, but I know exactly how that goes, and I know it doesn't work: 5 to 15 players would download and install, barely manage to organize a handful of matches. In that case you either get no idea of the balance and how things are effected, or you get an under sampled set of results, which is often worse. I get that some ppl are unhappy, but I know that this will be an improvement in the long run.

Ok, thanks. I'll keep a look out for similar issues. if you run into it again, let me know.

They are evolving.

ok I just tried the following to reproduce: 1v1 as seleucids, go phase 3, build two sentry towers, garrison sentry towers, garrison cc. Take player 2, train units, capture a tower, garrison, leave tower range. Take player 1, recapture tower, kill enemy occupants. I could not reproduce the issue. @axi what mods were u using? Did you ever click the cc to attack the tower while it was in the hands of your enemy, or did the cc select that target on its own when no other units were nearby?

Or perhaps it could be good to split it into a new upgrade. idk

I don't think this is true. I think it is much more desirable to have building arrows that have a constant effect over units in range, rather the being completely diluted across many units and then suddenly massacring an army once they are very low hp. I would bet players coming from other games would be confused that 0ad building arrows are random. I agree that it is currently a problem because of how many arrows are available from the fully garrisoned CC for example even in p1, but I am sure that some balancing can greatly improve the issues.

0.9^5 = 0.59 ~ 40% less damage. 59% of 150% (melee damage buff) = 88% so overall it takes roughly 12 percent slower to kill a building. Looks like I was wrong. Can you prove "70%"? @Player of 0AD Rams only got +4 hack armor so they technically should be 98% of the original damage at least according to the same math. But players have noticed that rams go down very quickly. maybe this is a by-product of the other changes?

Yeah the main two issues I think are the power of the fully garrisoned cc early in the game as well as the strength of turtling later on. I agree @Philip the Swaggerless that changing building damage could be a useful balance tool along with range, default arrows, and max arrows.

attacked by your ally? Thats interesting. I am not sure what would cause that. Do you have a replay I could investigate with?

yes, it should be impossible. in the case where the tower is recaptured by @axi, the cc will try shooting at it and fail because it is not an enemy building. After failing, it will be removed from the both the player controlled targeting queue as well as the list of available targets. It could be that I have misunderstood @axi tho.

@Player of 0AD the reason the chanakya hero was changed is because it is very awkward to have a hero with two bonuses that are mutually exclusive. You could not heal AND get the discount bonus, so after only seeing the healing properties in games, I decided the change was necessary. idk about you, but I have never seen the hero garrisoned except to try and heal up.

@Player of 0AD your second voting point here is incorrect. 5 armor corresponds to 40% less damage, which means units that deal hack damage have a net +10% strength vs buildings. Please reserve your judgments until the gameplay effects are well understood! I saw players complaining that archer cavalry were dealing more damage to women, this is simply the opposite of the case. I think the differences have simply pushed many players out of their comfort zone. Yes, maybe you don't like it as is, but this is experimental, and it is done with the long term growth of 0 A.D. gameplay in mind. So please give suggestions over the next couple of weeks and I will update it one way or another.

hmm actually I cannot reproduce the error. Neither manually targeting the captured tower nor letting the default AI attack it enabled the cc to shoot the tower after it switched back to my side. If you select a replay in your replay screen, you should be able to see the folder that has the replay in question. You could upload those here, or just send it to me directly.

Thanks so much for reporting @axi I think I know what this is and it should be simple to fix. I will add this fix to my patch, and fix it if we have time for another community mod release.

thanks for the suggestions. I will collect the suggestions (and also observations from games) and put together an update in a while. Depending on timing with respect to a27 release candidate(s), it might take the form of another community mod release. If that is the case, I will probably add in something like this: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D5232 and maybe a couple other a27 features that need more testing.

How about instead of selecting "random" for map biomes and team placements, the users could use a checklist with something like "select all" and "deselect all" to make things quicker. That way particular biomes and placements can be avoided, while still allowing for some surprises.

did u restart? Also be sure to disable 26.6 first. U might also need to check the folder name in case the zip file from mod.io hasn't given it a new name (like community-modXqu8.zip or something)

@Player of 0AD https://mod.io/g/0ad/m/community-mod Click "other versions" in the bottom right.

@Player of 0AD thanks for the suggestion. I could do it the other way. This is just the way that was first suggested to me. On the other point, I found that the healing ability was mutually exclusive with the ability for the hero to provide a discount, which isn't ideal. I can certainly make changes, but I would probably just make them for a27 rather than make a new community mod release.

Community mod version 6: Melee/Ranged rebalancing Melee units: +50% damage, less armor Ranged units: -25% damage (roughly the same damage vs melee because of reduced armor) Buildings and siege adjusted for higher hack damage Melee infantry slightly faster 9.5 ms base movement speed. clubmen get a small hack attack so they have fighting use. Non random building ai Buildings target closest units by default click to target units and select rally point on unit ctrl click to just set rally point to unit Accuracy for cc and forts reduced. Han fixes: poison arrows tech cost changed to 1200 food 1200 metal Fields easier to place Elephants get a splash attack Maury Heros: Chanakya: doesn't need to garrison for tech discount, slightly lower discount. Chandragupta: global ele bonus for speed and attack rate, local armor bonus for all soldiers Catapults smaller range and gain a splash attack

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Alpha27 I added a lot of the gameplay and balancing changes and added a maps section.

they look really good!

also, I doubt this will be a problem. Dancing was a problem when whole armies could avoid damage. In this case, someone might be able to avoid a little damage, but that will be very situational. Raiding units would not want to spend their time dancing, especially when the entities attacking them don't cost pop, and when they need to be still to attack.

Well, I would argue this is more about the rams and less about the arrows. btw I have a patch for that too.